AMR-Contra Costa County Trains Nearly 1,000 People on Compression Only CPR in One Day

The second annual American Medical Response (AMR) World CPR Challenge recently rolled across the United States. AMR teams from 80 operational locations came together for one mission: to teach people how to save a life by learning compression-only CPR. At 175 events in 28 states, AMR professionals trained 61,883 people during the 24-hour event, beating their 2013 record by more than 6,000.

Locally, AMR crew members trained 925 people in compression only CPR at three sites throughout the county. “This is important to our community as studies show that compression-only CPR is an effective and life-saving procedure,” added Erik Rohde, General Manager. “When bystanders perform compression-only CPR until emergency responders arrive, a patient’s chance of survival can be tripled.”

AMR paramedics, EMTs and support team members trained participants in compression-only CPR at more than 175 separate training events held around the country, including shopping malls, fire stations, high schools and outdoor venues.

“As the largest provider of medical transportation in the country, we rallied our national resources with the singular goal of making our communities safer by teaching compression-only CPR,” said AMR President Ted Van Horne. “I am so proud of the commitment, dedication and hard work of the more than 18,000 professionals at AMR that enabled this year’s event to surpass our 2013 results.”

While the AMR CPR Challenge is a one-day event, AMR professionals teach compression-only CPR throughout the year.

I am guessing AMR did not offer any of these sessions locally. CA liability laws would prevent any company from doing things like this, certainly can’t have regular citizens know how to save lives, that’s the governments job.

Red Cross offers all sorts of classes, at a price, in Oakland.

Call 911, better to let professionals save lives, even if they may not be able to arrive in time to save anyones life.

@Joe Blow
I’ve had a yearly recert for CPR, First Aid/First Responder and BBP (that’s Blood Borne Pathogens for you greenhorns).
They have been taking for years about converting to compression only CPR and doing away with the rescue breathing.
As I said. Had I known about this before it happened, I’d have gladly taken part.

@TraumaRX
They always tell us that we can’t do any more damage. If you’re performing CPR, there’s no pulse. It’s technically a dead body. You can’t do any more damage to a dead body. Yes, you might crack some ribs (in fact, if you’re doing it right, you will crack some ribs) but you can’t hurt a dead body. You can only bring them back to life.

How do you figure? If I do nothing they are likely to die. If I wait for Fire/EMS with a goal of responding within 4 to 8 minutes (90% of the time I might add) they are likely to die or have significant brain damage.

By the by, that response time is when the call actually gets dispatched to an Engine Company. It does not take into consideration how long the the person was down, how long it took to realize the person is down, find a phone to call with, try and talk to the police dispatcher to get transferred to Fire, who unless it’s a 9-1-1 call has to ask the distraught person where they live to send fire to help and still they have to dispatch a Fire Company and AMR.

So I break a few ribs? So what if it gives them a chance. I truly hope you are nothing but a troll and not an actual nurse.

I’m going to guess that TraumaRx is not a real “TraumaRx”, whatever specific title that moniker implies. Or if they are, they are monumentally ill-suited to the task. I believe this is the same person that lambasted the Samaritan that drove the gunshot victim to the emergency room.

His/her contention that everyone should “leave it to the professionals” seems in direct contraction to AMR General Manager Erik Rohde’s assertion that “a patient’s change of survival can be tripled.”

Aside from these singular incidents, the notion that the general public is too inept to provide life saving aide to another in mortal peril ignores both the most basic of moral imperatives and the whole of human history. It’s wonderful to have trained medical professionals available when you need them most. We are pretty comfortable here in suburban America, but we are one war, plague, or earthquake away from having to save our own lives. When the big one comes, we may all find ourselves instant paramedics. The more of us that have CPR training, the better. I find the view that lay people should leave trauma care “to the professionals” to be an absurd one.

ANYONE can do CPR. These days we are teaching hands only CPR, that means you just push on their chest until medics arrive at the scene to take over. Bystander CPR is one of the most important outcomes to surviving sudden cardiac arrest. If someone’s heart is not beating, performing CPR will only benefit the patient at the very least, no harm will be done. We encourage everyone to learn CPR and how to use an AED because it may make all the difference in the world to somebody some day. The brain does within 4 to 6 minutes without blood perfusion, bystander CPR is crucial to survival and to living a normal life after survival.

@17 TraumaRx I find it ironic that you are a chiropractor. You must be an incredibly young chiropractor. I say this because until very recently, twenty or thirty years ago, chiropractors were shunned by the larger medical community, and were not considered, in your words, “a properly trained medical professional.” They were quacks. Snake oil salesmen. Astrologers.

I disagree wholeheartedly with that traditional view, and have personally benefited greatly from chiropractic. I am left scratching my head that a member of a radical fringe branch of Western medicine would be so adamantly opposed to something so widely accepted as the notion that lay people should be trained in, and use when necessary, basic life saving skills.